Atrocity Exhibition Signed Limited Edition

by J. G. Ballard

Hardcover, 1990

Status

Available

Call number

PR6052.A46 A93

Genres

Publication

Re-Search Pubns (1990), Edition: Limited

Description

The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this novel. The central character's dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and motorcar crash victims.

User reviews

LibraryThing member iansales

Wanting to read more Ballard is hardly a contentious ambition, and I’ve read plenty of Ballard already. The 4th Estate editions also made a nice set with their distinctive cover designs, so it was worth picking up copies. Which is what I did. I’ve always been a bit ambivalent about Ballard,

perhaps preferring the idea of his fiction more than I did his actual fiction – which is itself quite a Ballardian attitude. He was never a great prose stylist, and he was often a better commentator on twentieth-century life than he was a novelist – what his books said was often more interesting than the stories he chose to tell. The Atrocity Exhibition (Annotated) is a case in point. Half the time, Ballard zeroes in quite effectively on some weird public compulsion, turns it on its head, and the result is a biting comment on the cultural landscape. But just as often, it’s word salad, and he piles the words one upon the other and it reads like an academic work that completely misses the point of its topic. And then, over all this, like giant flashing lights and deafening klaxons, is all the “controversial stuff”, story titles like ‘Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan’ and ‘Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy’. The problem with sacred cows is that no one will admit they make steaks that taste just like normal steaks. Of course, there’s also the bits and pieces of The Atrocity Exhibition (Annotated) that went on to become and/or inspire Crash, which is much the better work. But still, Ballard: always worth a read.

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LibraryThing member lriley

In the past I've struggled a bit with Ballard--there is no doubt in my mind though that he was a very imaginative and creative writer. Despite his antipathy for Ralph Nader (in his notes to the book) this is a great book--both in format, design, imagination, creativity, intent and his subsequent

ability to truly carry it off. For me there is a nod to the nouveau romanticists especially Robbe-Grillet--a sense of almost being shipwrecked into a dream which replays the same scenes over and over again with sometimes subtle, sometimes more overt variations against a background of a super modern depopulated urban landscape where violent death and celebrity are the real currency being traded on. Human emotions such as love or fear have no currency here. Even though this book reeks of irreligion there is almost something messianic about this Atrocity Exhibition. It always seems to return to certain themes--sexuality/pornography/death/fame--speaking of them from an objective scientific/godlike viewpoint with the intent it seems to me of deconstructing the emotions behind the acts while at the same time This books always stays on the edge. Car crashes and assassinations abound (JFK's being a major reference point) likewise allusions to the Vietnam--yet even with all those particularized cultural references this book does not feel dated--at all. That is quite remarkable.

Ballard's prose here is carefully precise as it needs to be. The design and the format of the book are as unique as the written content--there are many illustrations--representations of the human body and its functions, of modern architectural and human achievement. One can almost see this book in some respects as a warning that progress for its own sake can lead to our own dehumanization. Truly one of the best experimental of all time.

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LibraryThing member marek2009

This is a mixture of DeLillo, but without the fiction writer's finnese, or Baudrillard (whom he references), but without the essayists verve. I found it very difficult to begin with, really quite dull, as it is repititious & not particularly well written, but the images build to an effect, & the

ideas are fascinating & at time highly original. I am glad I persevered, by the end it is quite illuminating & funny. The notes (from 1990) are well worth including.

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LibraryThing member isabelx

An experimental novel about sex, death, media manipulation, car crashes and celebrity, written at the fag-end of the 1960s and foreshadowing various themes found in his later works. The narrative is very repetitive, with chapters telling versions of more or less the same story, and I found it by

turns tedious and repellent.

Rather too experimental for my tastes - it has taken me forever to read it, and it's only 184 pages long.

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LibraryThing member stillbeing

I have to admit, I mostly bought this due to the link with the Joy Division song, which has always puzzled me, but I wasn't expecting this. Not really a "novel" in the conventional sense, more a collection of snippets or impressions, which, in my interpretation, alter slightly enough each "round"

to create a parallel scenario. I wouldn't say this is easy reading, but well worth it for those with an appreciation of similar techniques.

*Where* you read this has a big effect on the overall impression - I couldn't read this one in bed of an evening, but reading it on the train made it all the more vivid, alluring, sensual and scary. I'd definately say this is one for the senses rather than the reason.

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LibraryThing member dczapka

There is a whole lot of insanity going on in this text, but it works in a strange, unexpected way.

This edition, replete with Ballard's own footnotes, provides plenty of explanation in a text that needs a lot of it: it's fragmentary, practically plotless, and overwhelmed with imagery and

incongruousness.

As it progresses, it actually does become more clear: Ballard's response to media- and celebrity-saturation from the '70s still rings clear today, and comes out most interestingly in the final (added) story, "The Secret History of World War 3."

Clearly, this will not be for everyone, as it's in your face and very experimental. But there's a coherence to the incoherence, and it's executed surprisingly well.

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LibraryThing member hampusforev

I often have a penchant for what others might term "self-indulgent" literature. I love Naked Lunch and most of Burroughs' work. So naturally that led me to believe that I would like Ballard's Atrocity Exhibition, often mentioned alongside Naked Lunch as a great cult book. And I did like it most of

the way, but in the end I found it rather boring. Ballard's tools are a bit blunt here, even though I love his psuedo-scientific jargon and laconic, weird style, most of the media landscape he tries to convey is ultimately lost on me, as a 20-year-old. I mean of course I know of JFK, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Reagan, but the names just doesn't carrie the same sort of resonance as they probably did back in the 60's. Also I can't stand art with a freudian rhetoric, which Ballard indulges somewhat in here. I did however love the comments Ballard made in my edition, and he's definitely a writer I'd like to get to know a little better.

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LibraryThing member librarianbryan

Gets better with age.This machine asks me which one of my "friends" I would recommend this too. I don't recommend this book to any of my "friends." I recommend this book to my enemies.

LibraryThing member Parthurbook

While I'm always up for an experimental piece, this collection of short stories, pamphlets and perspectives collected into a 'novel' left me cold .Very much the prequel to 'Crash!', TAE is thought-provoking in form and style, but not for the content itself. The irony of this 1990 annotated version

is that Ballard's addendum notes to each chapter are the richest, most insightful writing.

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LibraryThing member Razinha

Quite odd, made only less so by the author's annotations. Ballard said in his preface that's the reader could start anywhere and pretty much read it in any order. He repeated many phrases throughout and liked to combine things like body parts and the word "geometry", helicopters and

celebrities.

Weird book. Even though he interspersed his strange distractions with some really good (sentence length) compositions, I doubt I'll be reading any of his other stuff.

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LibraryThing member mrgan

An impossible book to recommend, yet I'm sure I'll remember it (and on several levels, appreciate it) for a long time. Its vile imagery and opaque structure are made no easier to swallow by Ballard's farcical regurgitation of 60/70s pop culture. If you wish for a more disciplined Burroughs, this is

for you. Otherwise, nod politely and move on.

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LibraryThing member brakketh

Collection of short fiction focused on atrocities (and the atrocious) times in the 1960s-70s.

LibraryThing member Kristelh

1970 experimental novel of short, connected stories that explore the mass media's impact on the mind and this book does impact the mind with series of violent, sexual descriptions and speculations of pornographic details. I rated it 2.4

4- legacy of looking at impacts of culture (mass media)
2 - not

much plot, pretty schizophrenic which might be the point
2 - no characters really, mentally ill narrator
3 - readability, ouch, an attack on the eye, ear, brain
1 - achievement.
Rating 2.4

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LibraryThing member bormgans

This review is more or less a random collage of fragments that appealed to me: fragments of reviews found on Goodreads, of the book’s preface by William Burroughs, of Hari Kunzru’s introduction, of a 2019 text by Rob Doyle in The Irish Times, and quotes from Ballard & the book itself.

Part of

this review also went through an additional process, as I asked an AI to attempt to integrate & summarize some of these fragments into a coherent whole – but I don’t think it did very well on that front.

My editing is fairly minimal, not zero. I also wrote a few sentences or parts of sentence of my own.

(...)

Full review on Weighing A Pig Doesn't Fatten It

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